California Knapping

Eleven thousand years ago Clovis mammoth hunters ranged over
North American and left a record of the knapper's art in beautifully
fluted spearheads, no two exactly the same. What followed Clovis
and the later bison hunting Folsom tradition was much cruder,
yet even these points were often well crafted and certainly functional
and a pleasure to view. After the passing of the big game and
the Paleo-Indian, distinctive regional cultures took form. In
California it was the San Dieguito.

Malcolm Rogers made endless treks into the California deserts
in search of the remains of these ancient people and discovered
what was left after perhaps ten thousand years of exposure to
sun, wind and rain -- rocks. Most the material culture had long
since vanished. But the rocks told a story. The earliest San Dieguito
preferred andesite as their medium, a volcanic rock less smooth
in texture than obsidian or even flint. From this they made not
mold-perfect points but crudely chipped choppers and spearheads,
rough knives and percussion cracked tools whose flat surfaces
resembled planes for cutting, shaving or smoothing wood or scraping
hides or freeing the fiber from agave. The San Dieguito percussion-flaked
stone stands in sharp contrast to the painstaking regularity of
much pressure-flaked work which, though technically of the highest
caliber and virtuosity, too often looks almost factory plastic
and lacks the character of the ancient artifacts. It may have
something to do with respect for the stone itself. The earliest
San Dieguito did not use the refined pressure flaking technique
at all, apparently, but simply banged stone against stone and
thereby produced useful tools for millennia. Naturally fractured
rock, direct and indirect percussion, pressure flaking and heat
treatment -- Native Californians would in later times exploit
all the wisdom of the flint knapper's art.

Unworked Rock

Rock can be surprisingly useful and beautiful just as it is.
For the Miwok of the Sierra Nevada, a naturally fractured rock
became a simple knife. Barrett and Gifford recorded they employed
these unworked pieces to hack off hazel branches and cut maple
shoots or roughly trim down a cedar bough for a bow. A simple
unworked flake struck from a flint core served to scrape split
maple withes for basketry or to finish the smoothing of the bow.

Percussion Technology

By the time ethnographers began asking questions, the art of
flint knapping had pretty much been lost. With the great influx
of Europeans and European-style goods to California in the middle
of the last century, the Indian quickly replaced his stone knife
with a steel blade. The accounts of flint knappng are few. Fortunately,
Saxton Pope obtained some information in the early years of this
century from Ishi, last of the Yahi, on the old stone-working
technique.

For arrow points the Yahi used bone, flint, or obsidian, especially
the latter, which was widely traded among the Indians of California.
As a first step the obsidian boulder was simply shattered by throwing
another rock against it. Ishi next selected one of the pieces
and from it broke off large flakes in the following fashion: holding
a short segment of antler or bone at a slight angle from the perpendicular
against a projecting surface, he struck the top of the antler
smartly with another stone and a flake would dislodge.

Flint knappers know that some stones break more evenly than
others. Stones such as flint and obsidian are among the best.
Moderns knappers know this is true because of the nature of the
crystalline structure. Obsidian has no crystal structure. Like
a fluid, applied force spreads equally in all directions, radiating
like a cone with the apex at the point of impact. Rippling down
and outward, the ripples actually can be seen on pieces struck
from obsidian -- waves of compression in the cone of force rending
the rock. Flint, on the other hand, has a cryptocrystalline structure
but it is so small and fine it behaves almost like obsidian when
struck with an object. Lack of large crystallized structure means
that when the stone is fractured, the form of the fracture depends
more on how it is struck (giving the craftsman the control) than
on inherent but unpredictable structure in the stone. Both flint
and obsidian and other good flint knapping materials, such as
chalcedony, chert, andesite and jasper, have this vitreous (glass-like)
quality and, like glass, are rich in silica. For knapping, materials
must also be elastic and homogeneous. They must have the ability
to snap back and be free of impurities.

Good stone breaks like glass: a direct perpendicular hit to
a flat surface creates a cone of force spreading out in obtuse
angles from the line of force, causing a small conical pyramid
to break away, as when a bullet strikes a window. All flint knappers,
ancient and modern, know instinctively from endless trial and
error how fine stone breaks. The basic theory holds true for direct
percussion (stone against stone), indirect (bone or another object
held against stone and then struck) and pressure flaking. In order
to take a thin and useful flake from a projecting surface, or
platform, the blunt tip of a section of antler must be held against
its edge at an angle tilting away from the vertical cliff wall
beneath (which hopefully will break away and become the flake).
The antler tine tilts so an edge of its imagined cone of force
passes just under the vertical face of the cliff below. The antler
punch is also positioned in line with a ridge on the cliff wall
to make a long flake. A rounded stone about the size of a fist
strikes the antler smartly. A tentative weak hit will only crumble
the rock or cause a step fracture (terminating the flake too soon
with a right angle break) and will not produce a long sheer flake.
Too hard and the rock shatters. Step fractures can also result
from too straight an angle of force, not following ridges (on
the cliff wall) or improper preparation of the striking platform
(it may need grinding with sandstone). Hinge fractures, a blade
with a premature rounded blunt break, occur when the platform
forms an angle greater than 90 degrees with its cliff wall.

The Chumash, recorded Henry Henshaw in the last century, placed
the flint in the cleft of a large stone to steady it while a very
hard obtusely pointed pebble of agate was held against it and
struck a quick tap with a quartz rock. In this way they made knives
and arrowheads.

Direct percussion requires greater skill than indirect. A deft
blow with the hammerstone or a baton of thick antler is struck
directly against the edge of another stone held in the hand or
on the leg. It is not as accurate or reliable and the flakes produced
tend to be less straight or uniform. However, direct percussion
requires fewer parts, and in that sense is simpler. It was probably
the only method used by the San Dieguito. Through direct percussion
large broken pieces could quickly be roughed into bifaces with
the shape of a crude hand ax and they could be used as such. They
were convenient forms to transport and from the two roughly chipped
sides useful smaller flakes could be struck as needed. Direct
percussion with a hammerstone could also rough out platform cores,
spearheads, knives, and arrow points. In the early 1870s Stephen
Powers observed the Wiyot shaping an arrowhead in this way.

Many hammerstones used in direct percussion have been found
in California archaeological contexts. They tend to be about the
size of a fist, hard and compact, with wear marks indicating their
use as hammerstones. Theodora Kroeber writes that for a hammerstone,
Ishi was accustomed to using a water-worn boulder of heavy stone.
the size and shape fit his hand well. He used it for indirect
percussion against a blunt-ended piece of strong bone to remove
flake after flake from an obsidian core -- long flakes for large
spear points or knife blades. The core itself could be fashioned
into a tool. But the hammerstone brought directly against the
obsidian mass -- direct percussion -- produced smaller flakes
from which Ishi made arrow points.

One hundred years ago Cephas Bard wrote of the Chumash: "Within
the recollection of early American settlers now living, these
natives have been known to flake off a piece of obsidian with
an indescribable motion of their hands, and to dexterously sharpen
its edge so that it would almost cut a hair" (Hudson and
Blackburn, 1987). Undoubtedly, Bard referred to direct percussion,
breaking a flake from a chunk of obsidian with a hammerstone,
and refining a through the technique known as pressure flaking.

Indirect percussion as practiced by the Wintuns,
from firsthand account of Redding (Holmes, 1891).

The article is from the book, entitled "Survival
Skills of Native California" (ISBN 0-87905-921-4),
by Paul Douglas Campbell. Permission to use the article on the
PrimitiveWays website was given by Mr. Campbell. Paul Campbell
can be contacted through his publisher, Gibbs Smith, P.O. Box
667, Layton, Utah 84041.

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